The human being is a vessel for sacred forces.
Few of us know much of anything about what this means. The forces a human being is capable of coming under the influences of are much, much higher than any forces we are familiar with from our level. Al 'Arabi referred to man as the
vicegerent of God; His earthly representative. He did not do so lightly; for truly, men and women were created to mediate the very Being of God, Himself and Herself, and allow this presence to manifest within the material world.
No clearer illustration of this can be given than through the prophets; and no higher instance of it can be cited than the incarnation of Jesus Christ.
Because of our limitations, mostly imposed by our intellectual centrism, we have little real physical or emotional experience of this; all of the images become literal to us, in one way or another, and all of the intellectual ideas start out as democrats and become tyrants. It's only by opening our hearts, a part that has a completely different capacity for feeling, and by opening our sensation, an organic tool for the manifestation of sacred forces, that we can begin to truly understand anything other than this.
Such forces are called transformative or enlightening forces because they completely change everything. They do not change anything externally; they change everything internally. And it is impossible to overestimate how big this change can be, or how responsible a man or woman must be to it if it begins to arrive.
Some conduct spiritual investigations, their inner efforts, as though they could be disconnected from religion, but this is impossible. Zen is all about opening to God; yoga is all about opening to God. Gurdjieff, as well, brought a work that was all about opening to God. Specific philosophies and ideologies are ultimately meaningless; the aim is always the same, no matter what words it is put in or how much one squirms to try and find some high intellectual ground on which to build the pedestal for it.
One does not try to climb upwards towards sacred forces; one
opens the Being to receive them. The Being — the Self, the
Purusha — is a manifestation of God, waiting to receive the sacred influences that emanate from the center of all creation and instantly appear, by degree, in all of the material universe.
Because of our physical incarnation and the vertical nature of our bodies, we perceive this as a situation of that which is above us and that which is below us; and sometimes, we perceive sacred energy as coming down into us, or moving up through us. Yet in reality, the energy moves in many dimensions — and in all directions. The direction is one of
levels, not up and down or left and right. So we either penetrate or are penetrated, and above all, we were designed to
receive, or be penetrated.
This is why our nature is, overall, essentially female — as is the nature of all material creation.
Of course, there I go again, trying to explain things in terms of philosophies or ideologies. Yet the question is always physical; the physical, material manifestation of the sacred, a holy task vouchsafed to humanity, in so far as we can embody consciousness.
I do not see the gravity — literally, the
gravity — of my task, because I do not understand it. There is only one purpose in life; it isn't to ensure my personal security, get things, make money, and so on. The only purpose, the only real purpose — as opposed to the countless purposes I invent — is to receive this sacred force.
The passion of Christ was sent to remind us of this fact. We fail to do so at our peril.
May your soul be filled with light.